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Gonna be very unpopular here, but the sooner gig companies like Uber and DoorDash collapse, the better. The business model of these so-called unicorns is effect

Gonna be very unpopular here, but the sooner gig companies like Uber and DoorDash collapse, the better. The business model of these so-called unicorns is effectively a Ponzi scheme where the end goal is for early investors to cash out with the IPO. However, unlike a Ponzi, these companies also rip off their contractors so most restaurants and drivers actually lose money by being involved with their "service". Straight-up middlemen who skim off the top behind a veneer of tech that can't even turn in a profit. Build a real business. If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition by first undercutting them, then jacking up prices on users, then you shouldn't exist [Edited the last sentence for punctuation]

realce 4y ago
> Build a real business. If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition by undercutting them then jacking up prices, then you shouldn't exist It's all so amazing to me. You take a incredibly profitable aspect of small businesses, turn it into a big business, lose all the profitability and hurt almost everyone involved, with the end goal being the ponzi cash-out or the automation of the entire sector leading to massive unemployment issues.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  Absolutely. The business of turning $1.00 into $0.95 (or less) must stop.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    There should be some reasonable limits on this type of dumping. It might be just allowed for first 3 or so months in new area. Or once a quarter limited duration campaigns. But otherwise it should result in banning operations for a while.
- tech_tuna 4y ago
  Web 4.0
FeistySkink 4y ago
The unit economics never made sense. None of the founders of these companies could ever explain how these things were supposed to be profitable without the hand waving. And it was up to everybody else in the company to make them be. Speaking from the first hand experience. So I too can´t wait for this gig economy bubble to pop.
- ClassyJacket 4y ago
  I've never understood why everyone says this. What's so costly that delivery and rideshare services can never be profitable? The cost to Uber or Doordash to provide one delivery must be practically nothing. Sure, they have large overheads, but once they have all their infrastructure going, each delivery is what, for them - a few database requests? How is that so expensive?
  - MattGaiser 4y ago
    The drivers and customer support.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    What's expensive for them is a bunch of things that really shouldn't be part of their business anyway. Marketing. Setting price markups. Researching new technologies to do God knows what. The only expense that makes much sense is app development, and honestly, that sounds like it should be done by another company. Just expose an API and let restaurants and their partners handle the UI layer. There are tons of lightweight ordering platforms that could easily plug into a delivery service service.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - makestuff 4y ago
    There is no moat. How many people are "loyal" to uber/dd/etc? Most people just order from whoever is cheapest. Therefore, it is a race to the bottom and you have to spend tons of money on marketing/promotions to gain customers. The app with the deepest investor pockets will win out. If there was only one app for delivery and they didn't have to spend any money on marketing/promotions then I bet they could offer a profitable service for a reasonable price.
new2this 4y ago
>Build a real business. If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition by undercutting them then jacking up prices, then you shouldn't exist This was a major part of the playbook of Standard Oil; I would consider them a real business. >The business model of these so-called unicorns is effectively a Ponzi scheme "Ponzi scheme" has been thrown around flippantly lately, and I think your comment is perfect example of that. I think it's a safe assumption that significantly more people order food from local restaurants than they did before DoorDash existed. So they did create a real market with a real product. It's not a 'box' that SBF would be proud of. >but the sooner gig companies like Uber and DoorDash collapse, the better. This I agree with, but for different reasons. These apps price their services artificially low by charging high fees to restaurants, underpaying drivers (forcing them to live on tips), and by- at times- subsidizing prices with investor money to keep them artificially low. Overall, I think it's a crappy business model that doesn't deliver much value. But that's just my opinion.
- banannaise 4y ago
  > This was a major part of the playbook of Standard Oil; I would consider them a real business. I also think Standard Oil shouldn't exist. In fact, so did the US government in a landmark antitrust case that you may have heard of. (on your other points, I'm pretty much entirely in agreement)
  - new2this 4y ago
    >I also think Standard Oil shouldn't exist. In fact, so did the US government in a landmark antitrust case that you may have heard of. Agreed, but "should/shouldn't exist" wasn't the argument. The initial argument was "if you use this strategy, you're not a real business" which I think is false. Distasteful, destructive, and something that should be illegal- sure. Ponzi scheme, doomed to fail, not a real business tactic- no.
    - banannaise 4y ago
      At this point we're both mostly into semantic territory. You focused on the beginning of the statement ("real business"), I focused on the end ("shouldn't exist"). I don't think a business that is only viable due to illegal pricing schemes is a real business, but that's also just semantics. Speaking of. > should be illegal Predatory pricing for the sake of driving competitors out of business to establish dominant market power is illegal, setting aside that the gradual erosion of enforcement means that antitrust law functionally no longer exists in the US.
mcronce 4y ago
Doordash doesn't even do a good job at it. The tech is awful. The website is slow; on mobile, it's so slow it's unusable. Payment issues require you to open dev tools to see actual actionable errors returned by the server. Strongly agreed that these gig companies, at least in their current form, can die as quick a death as possible.
- princevegeta89 4y ago
  Agreed their tech is awful. Website is painstakingly slow. I order on mobile using their website directly instead of the app, and they have some lame bugs on their homepage. Cannot comment on gig companies dying out but this company is so overrated.
- TingPing 4y ago
  I use it often and have an excellent experience tbh.
- savanaly 4y ago
  Why do folks have such different experiences with these things? Me and some friends I regularly hang out with regularly use door dash to get food for all of us. We're all web devs and fairly picky about website speed and no one has ever had any problem with the doordash app. Maybe some weird things with edge cases with restaurants that have combinations of sides/options that don't fit the doordash ui well, but not general slowness. I would most definitely not want Doordash to die a quick death and I'm sad that you do! If not for their existence it would probably be too much trouble to do the research about restaurants in our area that are open, what their food is, how to order, then place the order via whatever novel phone or buggy online ordering system they've set up. We'd probably just end up ordering Domino's every week instead of what we do now which would be worse for everyone!
  - mcronce 4y ago
    If you're using the app, that might explain the difference. I'm using the mobile web interface and it's so slow that they've lost sales from me before - not because I got frustrated and stopped, but because it took 10+ minutes to put together an order and the restaurant stopped taking orders before I could get it in. This has happened multiple times. The desktop web interface is slow enough to be irritating but not so slow it's unusable. Finding open restaurants with Google Maps is pretty easy. They have a specific option for "is currently open", and menus are frequently linked right from the business's listing.
ren_engineer 4y ago
the selling point to VCs and investors was that they would burn cash to acquire a customer base and then self-driving cars would allow them to cut their costs and print money. That obviously didn't work out and even if it had the big players like Google or even Tesla would have eventually rolled out cloned delivery programs with their own self-driving tech and beat them they really never should have been valued as tech companies, they are basically commodity transport companies like airlines who will at best have razor thin margins
infecto 4y ago
I don't believe them to be Ponzi schemes but I really dislike all gig based businesses. They are bad for the gig workers and usually bad for both sides of the gig in the long run.
skrowl 4y ago
It's just the latest in these types of stories where I'm absolutely floored by how many employees a company has. Why on earth does DoorDash have 20,800 employees (if 1250 represents 6%)? What are TWENTY THOUSAND PEOPLE doing all day for them?
- Larrikin 4y ago
  Door Dash is a fake company that couldn't even be profitable when we were all stuck inside our homes with no restaurants to go to., but that huge number is obviously inflated to include all of the actual active dashers. Pretty much every Uber, Lyft, GrubHub driver also is a registered dasher.
dspillett 4y ago
> Gonna be very unpopular here While there are some that will disagree, that is really not an unpopular opinion, aussuming > like Uber and DoorDash stays in there as a caveat, with > If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition … first … then you shouldn't exist being the salient point. Disrupting by being better, and the market evolving to account for the new method being better, is fine. That is one of the ways we improve over time. Disrupting by killing everything else even if your method is not generally better in the long run is a different proposition entirely. --- As side note: I do object to “ponzi scheme” becoming a phrase that just means any scam where someone wins and everyone else likely loses. This may be scammy behaviour, but it definitely isn't a ponzi scheme.
princevegeta89 4y ago
I wouldn't ask for Uber to collapse since they have different verticals now. One of my friends currently works at Uber and has disclosed to me that their business lines are doing good even in this sluggish market. The problem with these food delivery apps is, there are way too many parties to be paid a reasonable amount of money here and customers aren't willing to go beyond a specific limit of premium. Turning a profit is hard - even after punishing restaurants with 30%+ commissions, pushing "service fee" and other regulatory fee upon customers, and even after "stealing" drivers' tips. This company shouldn't have grown so much really. It all feels so hyperbolical with them raising so much investor money and hiring thousands of tech workers. AFAIK they've always relied upon investor money to pump and inflate numbers and acquire new customers with massive marketing spend.
zippergz 4y ago
Doordash simultaneously screws over the drivers, the restaurants, and the customers (with terrible service). It's truly a trifecta.
- tech_tuna 4y ago
  Cashdash
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Literally none of those three parties are forced to do business with doordash.
  - bena 4y ago
    While that's technically true, doesn't that just highlight how pointless the company is? Without drivers, restaurants, and diners, what does DoorDash do?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Without diners, employees, physical kitchens, what do restaurants do?
      - bena 4y ago
        You do see the difference, right? Two of those things are properties of the restaurant itself. DoorDash is an entirely separate party. Technically, without any one of those parties, DoorDash doesn't work but network effects can force one party to use a substandard service. Hell, even two of the parties. But if it's bad for all three. And there's other services like DoorDash? How does DoorDash stay afloat?
- ihumanable 4y ago
  And yet still can't turn a profit, it's really amazing. It would be one thing if I were sitting here going, "Well that makes sense you can't deliver a $12 hamburger for $10" but every time I use DoorDash it's "Somehow this $12 hamburger is listed as $18 and when I went to check out with service fees and tip it's going to be $40..."
wittycardio 4y ago
It's becoming pretty clear that almost nothing of value has been created in the 2010-2020 "tech" boom. Really unfortunate state of affairs
- p0pcult 4y ago
  >It's becoming pretty clear that almost nothing of societal value has been created in the 2010-2020 "tech" boom. Fixed that for you. Some people made obscene amounts of money.
musk_micropenis 4y ago
It turns out that it's expensive to have someone on a living wage wait on you hand and foot and satisfy your every convenience. Consumers aren't willing to pay what it actually costs when the investors start wanting to see a profit.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Will just focus on Uber, but I don't agree with this at all. Has everyone had amnesia about how horrible the general taxi model was before Uber? I can't count the number of times I was blatantly overcharged (e.g. in DC with their braindead "zone" system before they switched to meters) or took an egregiously out-of-the way route, or the cab was filthy, or it just didn't show up when I had scheduled (and I had no way to see where the cab even was), etc. With no feedback loop/rating system there was 0 incentive for cabs to improve their service. I agree that the VC funding model has resulted in things being grossly mispriced, but even if rides got significantly more expensive, the improvements Uber brought to the rides-for-hire model were huge and everyone just forgets how much people generally hated the taxi experience before they showed up.
- 300bps 4y ago
  Will just focus on Uber, but I don't agree with this at all. I actually agree with both of you! If I'm evaluating Doordash and the Uber Eats services, I think the OP is completely correct that the world would be better off without them. If I'm evaluating Uber the ride sharing service, I think you are completely correct that it has improved ride service dramatically.
- lancesells 4y ago
  Totally agree on Uber/Lyft. Taxis were / are awful in pretty much every place I've been (maybe not Germany). I don't agree with all the shitty tactics that these companies use to seduce drivers or the opaque pricing systems they have but they have improved on the taxi experience. For DoorDash and the ride-sharing companies I really wish there were some sort of localized non-profits that provided these services with none of the underhanded and sleazy tactics these companies use to try and achieve profitability.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    > For DoorDash and the ride-sharing companies I really wish there were some sort of localized non-profits that provided these services In Austin, TX there actually was, it was called Ride Austin. In 2016 Austin voters passed a resolution requiring drivers to be fingerprinted, so Uber and Lyft left until the city was overruled by state government about a year later (this happens all the time - Austin passes some liberal ordinance that the conservative state government later rescinds). In the time that Uber and Lyft were gone, we had lots of services that popped up to try to take their place, and Ride Austin was probably the best known. I liked it - it paid drivers better and there was an option to contribute to local charities. It was a non-profit but I believe it was essentially kicked off by a local tech billionaire (Joe Leimandt, who has been featured on other stories on HN). But that said, the app and service were never as good as Uber/Lyft, and though I tried to support them when Uber/Lyft came back, they weren't really able to compete and eventually closed down. Thus, as much as I like the idea of a local nonprofit providing this service, I think the Ride Austin example is as good a one as any to show why it's not really feasible.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
medellin 4y ago
What makes you think this in any way is leading to a collapse? If they were heading that way they would just keep hiring right now.
p0pcult 4y ago
These gig companies are vacuums that suck money up the income scale, from those who can least afford it, to those who least need it. A modern day Hobin Rood, if you will.
melenaboija 4y ago
> The business model of these so-called unicorns is effectively a Ponzi scheme where the end goal is for early investors to cash out with the IPO. Although I agree that some of these unicorns may be overvalued I don’t see how the Doordash business model is an effective Ponzi scheme.
dougSF70 4y ago
Should be made difficult to IPO a loss making business.

realce 4y ago

> Build a real business. If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition by undercutting them then jacking up prices, then you shouldn't exist It's all so amazing to me. You take a incredibly profitable aspect of small businesses, turn it into a big business, lose all the profitability and hurt almost everyone involved, with the end goal being the ponzi cash-out or the automation of the entire sector leading to massive unemployment issues.

automatic6131 4y ago
Absolutely. The business of turning $1.00 into $0.95 (or less) must stop.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  There should be some reasonable limits on this type of dumping. It might be just allowed for first 3 or so months in new area. Or once a quarter limited duration campaigns. But otherwise it should result in banning operations for a while.
tech_tuna 4y ago
Web 4.0

FeistySkink 4y ago

The unit economics never made sense. None of the founders of these companies could ever explain how these things were supposed to be profitable without the hand waving. And it was up to everybody else in the company to make them be. Speaking from the first hand experience. So I too can´t wait for this gig economy bubble to pop.

ClassyJacket 4y ago
I've never understood why everyone says this. What's so costly that delivery and rideshare services can never be profitable? The cost to Uber or Doordash to provide one delivery must be practically nothing. Sure, they have large overheads, but once they have all their infrastructure going, each delivery is what, for them - a few database requests? How is that so expensive?
- MattGaiser 4y ago
  The drivers and customer support.
- banannaise 4y ago
  What's expensive for them is a bunch of things that really shouldn't be part of their business anyway. Marketing. Setting price markups. Researching new technologies to do God knows what. The only expense that makes much sense is app development, and honestly, that sounds like it should be done by another company. Just expose an API and let restaurants and their partners handle the UI layer. There are tons of lightweight ordering platforms that could easily plug into a delivery service service.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- makestuff 4y ago
  There is no moat. How many people are "loyal" to uber/dd/etc? Most people just order from whoever is cheapest. Therefore, it is a race to the bottom and you have to spend tons of money on marketing/promotions to gain customers. The app with the deepest investor pockets will win out. If there was only one app for delivery and they didn't have to spend any money on marketing/promotions then I bet they could offer a profitable service for a reasonable price.

new2this 4y ago

>Build a real business. If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition by undercutting them then jacking up prices, then you shouldn't exist This was a major part of the playbook of Standard Oil; I would consider them a real business. >The business model of these so-called unicorns is effectively a Ponzi scheme "Ponzi scheme" has been thrown around flippantly lately, and I think your comment is perfect example of that. I think it's a safe assumption that significantly more people order food from local restaurants than they did before DoorDash existed. So they did create a real market with a real product. It's not a 'box' that SBF would be proud of. >but the sooner gig companies like Uber and DoorDash collapse, the better. This I agree with, but for different reasons. These apps price their services artificially low by charging high fees to restaurants, underpaying drivers (forcing them to live on tips), and by- at times- subsidizing prices with investor money to keep them artificially low. Overall, I think it's a crappy business model that doesn't deliver much value. But that's just my opinion.

banannaise 4y ago
> This was a major part of the playbook of Standard Oil; I would consider them a real business. I also think Standard Oil shouldn't exist. In fact, so did the US government in a landmark antitrust case that you may have heard of. (on your other points, I'm pretty much entirely in agreement)
- new2this 4y ago
  >I also think Standard Oil shouldn't exist. In fact, so did the US government in a landmark antitrust case that you may have heard of. Agreed, but "should/shouldn't exist" wasn't the argument. The initial argument was "if you use this strategy, you're not a real business" which I think is false. Distasteful, destructive, and something that should be illegal- sure. Ponzi scheme, doomed to fail, not a real business tactic- no.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    At this point we're both mostly into semantic territory. You focused on the beginning of the statement ("real business"), I focused on the end ("shouldn't exist"). I don't think a business that is only viable due to illegal pricing schemes is a real business, but that's also just semantics. Speaking of. > should be illegal Predatory pricing for the sake of driving competitors out of business to establish dominant market power is illegal, setting aside that the gradual erosion of enforcement means that antitrust law functionally no longer exists in the US.

mcronce 4y ago

Doordash doesn't even do a good job at it. The tech is awful. The website is slow; on mobile, it's so slow it's unusable. Payment issues require you to open dev tools to see actual actionable errors returned by the server. Strongly agreed that these gig companies, at least in their current form, can die as quick a death as possible.

princevegeta89 4y ago
Agreed their tech is awful. Website is painstakingly slow. I order on mobile using their website directly instead of the app, and they have some lame bugs on their homepage. Cannot comment on gig companies dying out but this company is so overrated.
TingPing 4y ago
I use it often and have an excellent experience tbh.
savanaly 4y ago
Why do folks have such different experiences with these things? Me and some friends I regularly hang out with regularly use door dash to get food for all of us. We're all web devs and fairly picky about website speed and no one has ever had any problem with the doordash app. Maybe some weird things with edge cases with restaurants that have combinations of sides/options that don't fit the doordash ui well, but not general slowness. I would most definitely not want Doordash to die a quick death and I'm sad that you do! If not for their existence it would probably be too much trouble to do the research about restaurants in our area that are open, what their food is, how to order, then place the order via whatever novel phone or buggy online ordering system they've set up. We'd probably just end up ordering Domino's every week instead of what we do now which would be worse for everyone!
- mcronce 4y ago
  If you're using the app, that might explain the difference. I'm using the mobile web interface and it's so slow that they've lost sales from me before - not because I got frustrated and stopped, but because it took 10+ minutes to put together an order and the restaurant stopped taking orders before I could get it in. This has happened multiple times. The desktop web interface is slow enough to be irritating but not so slow it's unusable. Finding open restaurants with Google Maps is pretty easy. They have a specific option for "is currently open", and menus are frequently linked right from the business's listing.

ren_engineer 4y ago

the selling point to VCs and investors was that they would burn cash to acquire a customer base and then self-driving cars would allow them to cut their costs and print money. That obviously didn't work out and even if it had the big players like Google or even Tesla would have eventually rolled out cloned delivery programs with their own self-driving tech and beat them they really never should have been valued as tech companies, they are basically commodity transport companies like airlines who will at best have razor thin margins

infecto 4y ago

I don't believe them to be Ponzi schemes but I really dislike all gig based businesses. They are bad for the gig workers and usually bad for both sides of the gig in the long run.

skrowl 4y ago

It's just the latest in these types of stories where I'm absolutely floored by how many employees a company has. Why on earth does DoorDash have 20,800 employees (if 1250 represents 6%)? What are TWENTY THOUSAND PEOPLE doing all day for them?

Larrikin 4y ago
Door Dash is a fake company that couldn't even be profitable when we were all stuck inside our homes with no restaurants to go to., but that huge number is obviously inflated to include all of the actual active dashers. Pretty much every Uber, Lyft, GrubHub driver also is a registered dasher.

dspillett 4y ago

> Gonna be very unpopular here While there are some that will disagree, that is really not an unpopular opinion, aussuming > like Uber and DoorDash stays in there as a caveat, with > If you can't be profitable without eliminating all the competition … first … then you shouldn't exist being the salient point. Disrupting by being better, and the market evolving to account for the new method being better, is fine. That is one of the ways we improve over time. Disrupting by killing everything else even if your method is not generally better in the long run is a different proposition entirely. --- As side note: I do object to “ponzi scheme” becoming a phrase that just means any scam where someone wins and everyone else likely loses. This may be scammy behaviour, but it definitely isn't a ponzi scheme.

princevegeta89 4y ago

I wouldn't ask for Uber to collapse since they have different verticals now. One of my friends currently works at Uber and has disclosed to me that their business lines are doing good even in this sluggish market. The problem with these food delivery apps is, there are way too many parties to be paid a reasonable amount of money here and customers aren't willing to go beyond a specific limit of premium. Turning a profit is hard - even after punishing restaurants with 30%+ commissions, pushing "service fee" and other regulatory fee upon customers, and even after "stealing" drivers' tips. This company shouldn't have grown so much really. It all feels so hyperbolical with them raising so much investor money and hiring thousands of tech workers. AFAIK they've always relied upon investor money to pump and inflate numbers and acquire new customers with massive marketing spend.

zippergz 4y ago

Doordash simultaneously screws over the drivers, the restaurants, and the customers (with terrible service). It's truly a trifecta.

tech_tuna 4y ago
Cashdash
whimsicalism 4y ago
Literally none of those three parties are forced to do business with doordash.
- bena 4y ago
  While that's technically true, doesn't that just highlight how pointless the company is? Without drivers, restaurants, and diners, what does DoorDash do?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Without diners, employees, physical kitchens, what do restaurants do?
    - bena 4y ago
      You do see the difference, right? Two of those things are properties of the restaurant itself. DoorDash is an entirely separate party. Technically, without any one of those parties, DoorDash doesn't work but network effects can force one party to use a substandard service. Hell, even two of the parties. But if it's bad for all three. And there's other services like DoorDash? How does DoorDash stay afloat?
ihumanable 4y ago
And yet still can't turn a profit, it's really amazing. It would be one thing if I were sitting here going, "Well that makes sense you can't deliver a $12 hamburger for $10" but every time I use DoorDash it's "Somehow this $12 hamburger is listed as $18 and when I went to check out with service fees and tip it's going to be $40..."

wittycardio 4y ago

It's becoming pretty clear that almost nothing of value has been created in the 2010-2020 "tech" boom. Really unfortunate state of affairs

p0pcult 4y ago
>It's becoming pretty clear that almost nothing of societal value has been created in the 2010-2020 "tech" boom. Fixed that for you. Some people made obscene amounts of money.

musk_micropenis 4y ago

It turns out that it's expensive to have someone on a living wage wait on you hand and foot and satisfy your every convenience. Consumers aren't willing to pay what it actually costs when the investors start wanting to see a profit.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Will just focus on Uber, but I don't agree with this at all. Has everyone had amnesia about how horrible the general taxi model was before Uber? I can't count the number of times I was blatantly overcharged (e.g. in DC with their braindead "zone" system before they switched to meters) or took an egregiously out-of-the way route, or the cab was filthy, or it just didn't show up when I had scheduled (and I had no way to see where the cab even was), etc. With no feedback loop/rating system there was 0 incentive for cabs to improve their service. I agree that the VC funding model has resulted in things being grossly mispriced, but even if rides got significantly more expensive, the improvements Uber brought to the rides-for-hire model were huge and everyone just forgets how much people generally hated the taxi experience before they showed up.

300bps 4y ago
Will just focus on Uber, but I don't agree with this at all. I actually agree with both of you! If I'm evaluating Doordash and the Uber Eats services, I think the OP is completely correct that the world would be better off without them. If I'm evaluating Uber the ride sharing service, I think you are completely correct that it has improved ride service dramatically.
lancesells 4y ago
Totally agree on Uber/Lyft. Taxis were / are awful in pretty much every place I've been (maybe not Germany). I don't agree with all the shitty tactics that these companies use to seduce drivers or the opaque pricing systems they have but they have improved on the taxi experience. For DoorDash and the ride-sharing companies I really wish there were some sort of localized non-profits that provided these services with none of the underhanded and sleazy tactics these companies use to try and achieve profitability.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > For DoorDash and the ride-sharing companies I really wish there were some sort of localized non-profits that provided these services In Austin, TX there actually was, it was called Ride Austin. In 2016 Austin voters passed a resolution requiring drivers to be fingerprinted, so Uber and Lyft left until the city was overruled by state government about a year later (this happens all the time - Austin passes some liberal ordinance that the conservative state government later rescinds). In the time that Uber and Lyft were gone, we had lots of services that popped up to try to take their place, and Ride Austin was probably the best known. I liked it - it paid drivers better and there was an option to contribute to local charities. It was a non-profit but I believe it was essentially kicked off by a local tech billionaire (Joe Leimandt, who has been featured on other stories on HN). But that said, the app and service were never as good as Uber/Lyft, and though I tried to support them when Uber/Lyft came back, they weren't really able to compete and eventually closed down. Thus, as much as I like the idea of a local nonprofit providing this service, I think the Ride Austin example is as good a one as any to show why it's not really feasible.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

medellin 4y ago

What makes you think this in any way is leading to a collapse? If they were heading that way they would just keep hiring right now.

p0pcult 4y ago

These gig companies are vacuums that suck money up the income scale, from those who can least afford it, to those who least need it. A modern day Hobin Rood, if you will.

melenaboija 4y ago

> The business model of these so-called unicorns is effectively a Ponzi scheme where the end goal is for early investors to cash out with the IPO. Although I agree that some of these unicorns may be overvalued I don’t see how the Doordash business model is an effective Ponzi scheme.

dougSF70 4y ago

Should be made difficult to IPO a loss making business.